Few people look beyond gold's glitter and rarity, but chemists have found that its chemical properties are just as interesting, making it a unique catalyst for producing unusual organic molecules. UC Berkeley's Dean Toste, a leader in the area of gold catalysis, attributes these properties to relativistic effects in the gold atom, the same effects that give gold its yellow luster. Essentially, gold catalysts are 'hot' because their electrons are heavy, this chemist proposes. Toste, a UC Berkeley associate professor of chemistry, has found a mother lode of new and unique gold-catalyzed reactions by applying Einstein's theory of relativity to the rare and precious metal. For the full article: Click Here .

DA Morgan